A Champion's Mind - Pete Sampras

going an extra round or two at some events, can make a big difference, ranking- and money-wise.
Whatever Korda ingested during that period, it didn’t catapult him to the top. He was always in the mix
near the top of the game, and I had struggled with him in the past (four years earlier, he’d beaten me in the
Grand Slam Cup 13–11 in the fifth).
I realize now that doping might have played a role in our U.S. Open encounter (Korda was, after all,
caught less than a year later). It was a long, debilitating match, played under strange conditions, in which
a little extra strength might have provided him with a critical advantage. We’ll never know, because only
Petr knows the truth about what he was—or wasn’t—doing. I bear him no ill will, and just write that loss
off as one of those things.
After that U.S. Open disappointment, I played one of my best Davis Cup matches ever, against a strong,
young Australian team on the hard courts in Rock Creek Park, Washington, D.C. I beat Mark Philippoussis
and Pat Rafter in my two singles to lead the United States into the final against Sweden. We would lose
that final, partly because I had to retire with a leg injury in the middle of my opening match against
Magnus Larsson. I did, however, win the two big year-end events, the Grand Slam Cup and the ATP
World Championships. In the process, I couldn’t help notice that I was seeing more new faces all the time
—guys like Patrick Rafter, Greg Rusedski, and Carlos Moya. . . . I was beginning to feel like a veteran.
I finished as number one for the fifth year in a row in 1997, tying Jimmy Connors’s record. My mission
for the coming year, regardless of my parallel quest to break Roy Emerson’s record for Grand Slam
singles titles (with ten, I trailed him by two at the end of ’97), was to become the only man ever to finish
number one for six years running. Unfortunately, I got off to a pretty slow start.
I had an easy draw at the Australian Open, and didn’t lose a set until the quarters, where I lost a match
I’d just as soon forget to Karol Kucera. A few weeks later, I won just six games off of a resurgent Andre
Agassi in the big indoor tournament in San Jose. In the two major events of the late winter, Indian Wells
and Miami, I took losses from Tomas Muster and Wayne Ferreira, respectively. Both of them were in
early rounds. I had just one tournament win before the tour moved to Europe for the spring, and that was at
my old standby—Philadelphia.
I was picked apart by Fabrice Santoro in the second round at the big Monte Carlo tournament, so I
returned to the States and scooped up a win on the green clay of Atlanta. Green clay, or HAR-T RU, is a
U.S. phenomenon. The loose surface dressing is more granular and slippery than the brick dust of red
clay, so the court plays slightly faster. Along the way, I beat a nice clay-court player from Paraguay,
Ramon Delgado, in two tiebreaker sets. Buoyed by my win, I returned to Europe and got to the third round
of the Italian Open before my countryman Michael Chang sat me down. I felt all right about my game
going to Roland Garros.
I was reasonably confident, and I had a kind draw in Paris, starting with my pal Todd Martin in the first
round. However a match with Todd went, I was always comfortable playing him, and this time I was on
my game and I rolled into the second round in good shape. I found myself up against Delgado, the claycourt
expert I’d beaten handily on clay just a few weeks earlier in Atlanta.
During the match, all of my unresolved issues with clay-court tennis began to play on my mind. Paul sat
by, horrified, as I lost a first-set tiebreaker and then went down winning just seven games over the next
two sets. It wasn’t just that I lost, it was how I lost—I looked like a fish out of water, flopping around in
the dust on the floor of the Philippe Chatrier Court Centrale. I was playing a guy who was barely inside
the top hundred, and who would eventually fall off the ATP computer-ranking chart without ever winning
a singles title (his career record in singles was 94–103). Yet I was the one who played with slumped
shoulders and a lack of fire in my belly. It was one of the most negative performances of my career.
I had survived and overcome difficult moments before, but this time I really recognized that my time in